Saturday, March 5, 2016

Fearless Females - Day 5 - How They Met

Lisa Alzo, the Accidental Genealogist,
started a blogging prompt-series in 2010 in honor of Women's History
Month and our female ancestors. If you wish to participate, the prompts
are here.

How did they meet? You've documented marriages, now, go back a bit. Do you know the story of how your parents met? Your grandparents?

I know a bit about my parents meeting, but it doesn't make for an interesting blog post, and my maternal grandparents met through work, but the better story is about my paternal grandparents and is actually something I was planning to post later in the month because the 27th will mark 90 years since the dance where they met. If you read my Amanuensis Monday posts transcribing my grandfather's story, you might remember it.

Program from the concert and dance.

In March of 1926 my grandmother, Dagmar Alice Viola Anderson, had graduated from South Manchester High School but I don't know if she was working. My father had always thought that she never had a job, but the 1930 census says she was a stenographer at an insurance office.

My grandfather, Howard Bierly Matthews, was an undergraduate at Wesleyan University and a member of both their Glee Club and the Jibers quartet. Both performed at the South Manchester High School Class of 1926 concert and dance where he was introduced to my grandmother.

Former So. Manchester High School, now a senior residence.

I can even give you a little taste of what was heard that night. I stumbled on something called Wesleyan Sings a few years ago and while this recording of Campus Song, the first song performed that evening, does not include my grandfather, it does include my dad, a Wesleyan grad in 1958.

I don't know why it took a year before she became his steady date, but my grandfather wrote that starting with the Wesleyan University Prom Dances in 1927, my grandmother was his date at all dances until he graduated in 1928.

They married in 1931 after he received his Masters at Columbia University and my grandfather kept the program from that dance for the rest of his life.